My first thought was, how the hell did he know my name? My second thought was, why was he wearing a space suit as well? I didn’t ask, but I did exactly what he said and sat down on the bed. After all, if I was in some sort of trouble, or if there was some sort of killer virus, I wanted his help. I didn’t want to be like all those people trapped out the front of the hospital on the other side of the fence. We were lucky to have even made it inside, and I felt privileged to be receiving medical attention when so many people were going without. I was still worried that he needed to wear the suit and that it was necessary to have two heavily armed soldiers in the room, but maybe it was just a precaution.

“Lie down for me.”

Again, I did as he said. No questions asked. But then he raised the rail guards on the sides of the bed and bound my hands and feet with Velcro straps. “Um, is this really necessary?” I asked as my pulse quickened.

“Just a precaution.”

“Precaution for what? Why do I need to be tied to the bed?”

“You’re one of the lucky few. Do you realize that?”

“Lucky?”

“Yes. Very lucky.”

I assumed he meant because I was inside the hospital instead of being locked out. But what I didn’t know was that he meant not many people who come into contact with the Oz virus survive.

“Rebecca, I need to ask you some questions about what happened at the police station,” he said. “I need you to be completely honest with me. If you lie, I will find out.”

He said it as though it was a threat.

“I’m not a liar,” I said.

“Good. Now tell me what happened.”

I took a deep breath. I wasn’t really sure where to start. Did I need to tell him about the party and how we broke curfew?

“Anything you say will be held in strict confidence,” the Doctor assured me as he clicked on a Dictaphone.

For some reason I didn’t believe him. “Why do you have a Dictaphone?”

“Just for my personal records. Please, Rebecca, we don’t have much time,” he said as he checked his watch.

He kept checking his watch every thirty seconds or so. When I think back to this moment, it’s like he knew what was coming. It’s like he knew he needed to get the hell out of Sydney before it was too late.

I told him what had happened. I told him that we were arrested for breaking curfew and that we were kept in a holding cell over night with this weird guy. And how the weird guy went crazy and wrestled with Jack. And then how we were attacked by a couple of other psychos. I told him that Sergeant Pearce and Lieutenant Smith and this other soldier, who I didn’t even know the name of, had been killed.

“You shared a cell with a person who turned violent without warning?” Doctor Hunter asked, seemingly ignoring the part about how two soldiers and a police officer had been killed.

“Yeah. He was completely wasted when they brought him in. He was passed out for the whole night. And then the next day when he woke up in the afternoon he went crazy and tried to bite Jack.”

“Strange, most cases take twenty to thirty minutes for infection to take over,” he mumbled to himself. “Fascinating. Maybe because he was intoxicated there was a delayed onset?” The doctor had the Dictaphone recording but he also scribbled notes furiously with an intense, laser like focus.

“Were you bitten at all?” he asked me.

“No.”

“Did you come into direct contact with any bodily fluids, like blood or saliva?”

I think back to all the blood Officer Dennis was covered in. I thought about the crazy lady and how she was frothing at the mouth, how Tommy was drooling blood and how Jack wrestled with him in the cell.

“No. Not me. But one of the police officers was covered in blood,” I explained. “Private Yoshida asked him whose blood he was covered in and he said it wasn’t his.”

“And what of young Jack? Was he scratched or bitten when he wrestled in the cell?”

“No. I don’t think so. I think he just pushed that guy off him and then he fell back and cracked his head against the wall. It was totally self-defense by the way.”

Doctor Hunter stared directly at me, making me uncomfortable. It was like he didn’t believe me. Not about the self-defense part but about the wrestling. I had omitted the closeness and the fierceness of the wrestle and I didn’t even know why.

He flared his nostrils. “I hope you’re being honest with me, Rebecca. This virus is not to be taken lightly.”

“I’m being completely honest.”

He wrote something down in his notebook, probably something along the lines of how he didn’t believe me. “This virus is unlike anything we’ve ever seen before,” he said. “It completely robs a person of their humanity, it takes away their soul.”

“Do you think the people at the police station were infected with the Oz Virus?” I asked.

“It’s possible. The very first thing that happens to a person upon exposure is they lose their basic motor skills and they lose sensitivity in their limbs. These early symptoms are fairly standard but then something else happens. You begin to lose the ability to perform even the most basic of cognitive processes. After a few minutes they lose the ability to process simple hypothetical questions. We think it might attack the frontal lobe of the brain. But we’re not sure. Five minutes after exposure, the virus has destroyed enough brain cells that you can test a suspected case by asking them a simple hypothetical question. If they can’t answer, if they don’t understand, then they are undoubtedly infected. Would you like an example of a question we use to test suspected cases?”

Did he think I was infected? “Why, are you going to test me? Do you think I’m infected?” I said.

He raised his hands as if to reassure me that everything was all right. “Of course not, Rebecca. It’s just a precaution.”

He kept saying everything was just a precaution.

“For example,” he said. “To gauge whether or not someone is infected, or even to get an idea of how far advanced the infection is, you could ask them a question like, what three things would you take to a deserted island? Or my personal favorite, are you a dog person or a cat person? Simple enough question, right? Most people would either choose one or the other. Some say that they can’t decide and that they’re a lover of all animals. A minority will say they don’t like either of them.

“But a person infected with the Oz virus will not give any of these answers. It’s almost as if they don’t understand the question at all. Some of them close their eyes to concentrate, exerting an unusual amount of effort to actually visualize the question. But after a few attempts they simply stop trying. After this you can ask them even more basic questions like their home address and their date of birth. If the virus has advanced to a certain point, they won’t be able to answer these questions. Some cases will give their old home address, displaying symptoms similar to concussion.”

“Sounds pretty full on,” I said.

“It is,” he replied. “Twenty minutes later, the virus completely takes over, causing the infected to become extremely violent.” He slid the Dictaphone closer to me. “So, Rebecca, what are you? Are you a dog person or a cat person?”

I opened my mouth to answer but then thought to myself, what if it was a trick? What if infected people always say cat? Or that they didn’t like animals at all. But then I thought no, that would be stupid, why would he trick me? And then I thought, oh no, he’s going to take my hesitation as a sign of infection. So I started rambling, guessing that a whole bunch of ideas blurted out was better than none.

“Let me just start off by saying that it’s an excellent question. And really, I’m a lover of all animals. But if I had to choose, I mean if someone came up to me and pointed a gun at my head and forced me to choose, I’d have to say I’m a dog person. And let me explain. I think the reason I’m a dog person boils down to one main reason. And that reason is that cats have a real evil streak about them. If a cat catches a mouse to eat, it’ll play with the mouse before it actually kills it. A cat is at the top of the food chain, but that’s not enough. They need to rub it in. It’s sadistic. You don’t ever see a dog doing that.”

The doctor raised an eyebrow. “I see.”

There was a long uncomfortable silence. He wrote down more notes.

“So, did I pass?” I asked.

“Of course you did.”

“So I’m not infected?”

“I was at a barbeque just the other week,” he said, ignoring my question. “It’s funny how we could afford a simple luxury like barbequing not so long ago. Anyway, this guy, one of the Woomera locals brought his pet along. It wasn’t a dog or a cat or anything cute and friendly. It was a little baby snake. And it wasn’t a non-venomous snake, like a python or something like that. It was a Taipan. An Australian inland Taipan. Do you know what that is?”

I shook my head

“It is without a doubt the most venomous snake on the planet. Forget the Black Mamba, forget the King Cobra. The inland Taipan, or fierce snake as it’s commonly known as, is the deadliest by far. Nothing else even comes close. One bite from this particular snake and you’re dead within a few minutes. Forget calling an ambulance, forget the anti-venom, there’s just not enough time.”

I had no idea where he was going with this. I just wanted him to give me the all clear so I could go home.

“This virus is much the same,” he continued. “One bite and you’re dead. Forget the anti-virus, forget the cure. There’s no time.”

He seemed to be talking to himself at that point. I noticed his Dictaphone was still on. It was almost like he was making notes, recording his thoughts so he could publish them in a medical journal one day.

There was a knock at the door and the Doctor snapped out of his reverie. A soldier in a space suit wheeled in a bed. On the bed was Kenji. He was strapped to the rail guards like me.

The doctor collected his notes. “Thank you, Rebecca. You’ve been most helpful. Leave these two here for now,” he said to the soldiers. “At least until we interview the others.”

“Hurry, sir. We don’t have much time,” one of them replied.

The doctor turned his Dictaphone off and left.

Kenji’s bed was right next to mine. I sort of understood why they would strap me to a bed, but why would they do it to Kenji, to one of their own?

“How come they tied you to a bed?” I finally asked.

“I guess they figured I came into close contact with the virus,” he said. “It’s just a precaution.”

“But we don’t even know if those psychos at the police station were infected.”

“They were showing all the symptoms. The violent behavior, the indifference to pain, the bleeding. We have to be real careful. This virus… it’s extremely volatile.”

“So I keep hearing. But I thought the virus was contained at the Woomera immigration center?”

Kenji shook his head. “The immigration center was a mess. In a matter of days it had spread through the population. I was basically on clean up duty and containment. But I knew this thing couldn’t be contained. It was already out of control by the time I got there. That’s why I deserted my post. That’s why I came for you, Rebecca. I needed to warn you.”

There was an awkward silence, which was weird because I used to be able to sit with Kenji in total silence for hours and hours and there was never anything awkward about it.

“Look, Rebecca,” he said. “I’m real sorry about when I left. I didn’t tell you because I wasn’t sure how to tell you.”

“A simple goodbye would’ve been just fine. Way better than not saying anything at all.”

“I know…” he said, his voice trailing off.

It was like he was thinking of the right way to say it without upsetting me further. Or maybe he was waiting for me to ask him why he didn’t tell me why he left. I don’t know. I didn’t want to play games so I kept my mouth shut. I can be real stubborn sometimes. Well, most of the time.

“My parents shipped me off to military school,” he said after a while. “I dropped out after a couple of weeks and joined the Marines. I had some cousins of mine from San Fran forge a fake birth certificate that said I was eighteen. I didn’t even tell my parents right away. I know that doesn’t make it right not to have told you but I was scared, you know? And I didn’t want to get you into any trouble off my folks.

“So I joined the Marines. And I don’t know why, but I excelled. I became a sniper. I knew you were upset at your father for going back to the Middle East and I knew you’d be mad at me for leaving and then running off to join the Marines. I know I should’ve told you. I know what I did was wrong. And I’m sorry. I really am sorry. I think about it every day. I should’ve told you.”

Kenji had opened up the flood gates and let everything pour out. It sounded like he had been keeping that speech bottled up for a while now. I couldn’t see from where I was lying down but it sounded like he was crying.

“During all the down time and the waiting,” he continued. “All I could think about was telling you that I’m sorry.”

I had hated him for so long and had been hurting for so long, now I didn’t know what to feel. I’d gone from red hot rage to feeling completely sympathetic and understanding in a matter of minutes. Basically he had melted my insides and now I was just mad at myself for not being mad at him. I mean, he left and he was a jerk for leaving, right?

I was so caught up with how hurt and how angry I was, that I never once even thought about what he was going through or why he left in the first place. I guess that was me being selfish.

“I’m not mad,” I finally said. “I was mad at first. And I was mad for a long time. But I’m not anymore. At least I don’t think I am. Well, maybe I am. But when you left it was like you died. It was just so sudden. One minute you were there and we could hang out together and the next minute you weren’t there. You were completely gone. I couldn’t even call you or anything. It was horrible.”

It was a conversation that we needed to have. It had been brewing for the past two years, ever since he left. After we said what we needed to say we both laid there in silence, strapped to our hospital beds. Not really concerned about being tied up or what was going on around us. On the plus side, it was less awkward.

It almost felt like back when we were together. I remember when we used to stay up all night watching b-grade action movies like ‘Rocky Four’ and ‘Top Gun’. Every now and then we would watch a chick flick. ‘The Bodyguard’ was my favorite. And he liked it because it was based on an old Akira Kurosawa movie. I remember the times we used to camp out in the backyard together. One time, over summer, we camped out in his backyard for two weeks straight. The tent killed the patch of grass it was covering. His parents were so mad at us. But then again, they never really liked me in the first place, especially his dad.

“So what happened,” I asked. “Where did you go? What are you even doing here?”

He told me his story and I was completely shocked at what he had been doing for the past two years. He had served in Iraq and Afghanistan as a sniper and a scout. He wasn’t sure of his confirmed kills because in the Afghan Mountains it was nearly impossible to get close enough to the enemy to actually confirm a kill. But he thought it was maybe over a hundred. I asked him if that was a lot, and he said it was.

He was only redeployed to Australia last week. He knew through a letter from his parents that I’d moved here.

“I couldn’t believe that I tracked you down and actually found you,” he said. “And when you answered your door, I nearly died of a heart attack.”

Now I was the one who felt like I should apologize. I was about to tell him I was sorry, that I never should’ve slammed the door in his face the other day. I wanted to ask him how bad the virus was and if he really thought it was out of control. But then Doctor Hunter returned.

“We need to move you to another room,” he said.

“What room?” Kenji asked “What for?”

“We need to isolate you immediately. We’re moving you to the morgue.”